CREEPTASTIC

IN AN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT BOTH INSPIRES AND CREEPS, DOCTORS AT THE University Of Oxford say they have kept a liver outside the human body, a development that could save save thousands more lives annually while inspiring thoughts of Frankenstein.

The liver was “kept alive, warm and functioning outside a human being on a newly-developed machine and then successfully transplanted into patients in a medical world first,” Reuters reports.
“It was astounding to see an initially cold, grey liver flushing with color once hooked up to our machine and performing as it would within the body,” said machine co-creator Constantin Coussios, a professor of biomedical engineering at Oxford University. “What was even more amazing was to see the same liver transplanted into a patient who is now walking around.”

Two patients received new livers kept alive on the machine during surgeries last month at King’s College Hospital (KCH) in London. One of them, 62-year-old Briton Ian Christiem said, “I feel better than I’ve felt for 10 to 15 years, even allowing for the pain and wound that’s got to heal.”

Currently livers awaiting transplant are kept cold on ice for up to 20 hours, limiting the geographic range of of the potential transplant. If the new machine becomes widely available, it could dramatically extend the lives of organs harvested for transplant. According to Reuters, up to 30,000 people annually die awaiting new livers; a quarter of them will die before an organ becomes available.

The new process “perfuses” the liver — or supplies it with red blood cells at body temperature. If there are more successful trial uses of the device, Coussios says it could become available as soon as 2014.